Who knocked us out of worldcup wasn't it Uae ? - Dave hougtan interview

[tej_27]

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/dave ... ia-1328320

[Googly]

Thats a good interview! Mr Houghton certainly has some diplomatic responses.

[sloandog]

Good interview. Very much keeping his cards close to his chest when discussing potential players from overseas.
I don't think Ben Curran is going to be a realistic option while he's at Northants due to his nationality. Melton and Ballance (can't believe I'm saying that) and Nick Welch perhaps in a year or 2.

I've been very surprised with Brad Evans' pace. Looks visibly quicker than some of the fast bowlers we've been playing. Just needs to harness that control.

It's great that he's building a big squad, that's the basis for success to any side.

[TapsC2]

To be honest Bllance probably needs just 1 Logan Cup match to get selected anyway. He is far better than anything we have right now

[CrimsonAvenger]

Apart from some candid replies, I think one should really congratulate the interviewer here, Danyal Rasool, who put up excellent specific questions in the first place instead of the plain old ones for which answers like "we are rebuilding, young inexperienced team that is learning all the time, etc." would have sufficed.

There have been reports that you could play a role in bringing some of the players who've gone to England, like Ben Curran and Gary Ballance, back to Zimbabwe. Is that an opportunity you're exploring?
I don't think that we've ever said anybody who goes and plays elsewhere can't play for Zimbabwe. The biggest thing is letting them know they can come back. So you drop them a line and say, this is an option for you. But they must want to come back to play for Zimbabwe. This is not a case of us going out there and throwing contracts at people who haven't broken the world where they are anyway. They can get involved in the franchise system and if selected, play for Zimbabwe. There's nothing action-wise with specific players going on at the moment, but I have told the guys the door is open.

This is no different than the typical ZC take on this topic. A dampener on all those speculative threads...

[Googly]

Yeah that was an interesting question. Pity he didn't specifically ask him about Ballance and quash the rumours one way or another.

[sam_ahm]

Brilliant interview!

One thing I'm absolutely sure about folks is that one must always play to win and not worry about easier/tougher group, like Dave rightly mentioned. I don't think being in the other group would have been any better than being in the group they currently are.

[Jemisi]

I agree Crimson, a lot of those questions were zcf specials.

[zimbos_05]

The telling thing in this interview was how he mentioned that Rajput had effectively created a culture of losing. I've said for a long time that a lot of our problem is the mental.

Our players need to be better at that big time. Rajput was a massively bad appointment and that it took ZC so long to get rid of him, and he is still part of the setup, is a massive indictment on the board. TM needs to take all the ownership for the shit show that was Rajput.

[AussieZimFan]

Does anyone know what the current policy is with Zimbabwean born players playing in the UK and not just referring to the upcoming WC, but in a general context? Say for example Ryan Higgins or Eddie Bryom. Are they eligible to play for the national side and choose not to due to personal preference, their county teams not releasing them to play or Zimbabwe cricket considering them not eligible as they don't play in the local first class competitions? It doesn't seem to stop other national teams from selecting players who play first class cricket elsewhere